


Fragmentary

by Ruler_of_Nope_Island



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Infidelity, Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex, Voyeurism, mentions of periods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 17:31:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14720526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruler_of_Nope_Island/pseuds/Ruler_of_Nope_Island
Summary: Jonah Magnus watches his friend's wife and is moved to take action. Or: Jonah Magnus was misusing the Beholding for sexy times before Elias made it cool.





	Fragmentary

**Author's Note:**

> Look at me writing het.

Always watching, never touching. Jonah sees Clara, her bored face turned away to the wall as her husband clumsily tries to get her with child. He cannot see through her eyes, though; who is she thinking of? She cannot know how Jonah watches them couple. Although her lips form his name, not Albrecht’s when she is alone, when she touches herself. 

But women have a way of knowing. One day he receives a package, containing a chemise. He holds it to his face, inhales, smells her sweat and perfume. He decides to keep it under his pillow, aching for her. 

*

 

Albrecht has travelled but is not a man of the world. His mind is closed; his tastes painfully provincial. He beds comely, dull women, usually other people’s maids. He caught a disease, once, and was careful thereafter, although the damage was done. 

Jonah has not travelled. But he does not need to. Everything is laid out before him; he has no need of the grudging hand of a servant to bring him pleasure. Instead he sends his sight out to the docks, to the lush brothels, to the bedrooms of ordinary folk. The perversions found there are bizarre and exquisite. 

*

 

Jonah knows every inch of Clara’s body. Albrecht will push her nightdress up to her hips and discreetly spit on his hand before they couple; he has never seen her as Jonah has, glistening from her bath, legs spread, as she rubs between her thighs and stains the coverlet. 

He knows the pink of her nipples and the darkness of her hair. He knows where the flush sits - breasts and cheeks - after she finds release. He wants to take Albrecht and shake him; look under her dress, you coward. But he also enjoys that this vision belongs to him alone. 

*

Those dresses; all in muted tones, stylish in cut although not completely of the moment. They display Clara’s beautiful shoulders and the soft curves of her breasts to their best effect. Her hands dance across keys of the pianoforte, slender fingers coaxing music forth. Albrecht turns away, chattering to Jonah about the German situation. 

He knows Jonah has opinions about such things but is not afraid of controversy; of spirited discussion between friends. What would he say to Jonah knocking his head upon the wall and making love to Clara on the dinner table? Perhaps that’s a controversy too far. 

 

*

His Master has nothing to say on the cunning of women; nor does he find any explanations in the letters he receives. Not all women are witches, although ancient wisdom has it that most witches are women. Some of his letters are about witches, although he casts them aside to the “unlikely” pile, relying on his god-given, expert’s eye. 

Clara’s dinner invitation is scented with the same perfume as her chemise was; what power does she have, that she knows he is driven half-mad by rosewater? A woman’s trick. Not, his paranoid brain insists, some kind of love potion. 

*  
White powder has settled in the bottom of Albrecht’s glass. Of course he doesn’t notice; blind, blind, blind. Jonah catches Clara’s eye; she raises an eyebrow slightly. Something to make him sleep, deep and dreamless. A better man would have knocked the glass from his friend’s hand; would have prevented his friend from drinking deep. 

Instead Jonah refilled his glass until Albrecht was swaying; Clara called a sturdy manservant to take him upstairs, to bed and to rest. The hour is too late for Jonah to go home; the streets can be so dangerous. Luckily the spare bedroom is made up. 

* 

Presented with the reality of Clara, Jonah finds himself lost. Where to begin? But Clara has her own ideas; she stands in front of him in the flickering candlelight, unpinning her hair and slipping out of her gown. 

A lesser man would have balked to see his love-object strip herself of her feminine artifice; false hair, powder - but Jonah has seen Clara at her most secret times; sleeping, eating, crying over the bloody rags that taunted her every month. Besides, he reminds himself, he is no lesser, no ordinary man. His hands reach out to help her unlace her stays. 

*

Stripped bare, finally, Clara stands before him for just a moment before he is overwhelmed and has to take her in his arms. They kiss, almost chastely, but Jonah slides his hands between her legs, feels satisfaction at how wet she is - she must have been excited for most of this evening - and slides a single finger inside her. 

He catches her gasp with his mouth. She reaches down and squeezes him through his clothes. It takes a great effort not to take her then but remembers the tepid couplings she has with her husband. He takes his boots off.

 

 

*

Clara protests when he puts his mouth on her most private parts. She quickly falls apart under his tongue, as inexperienced as it is. He remembers a criticism from his university days; a good understanding of theory but unwilling to do the work to gain practical experience. 

Her fingers dig into his scalp, wrenching his hair. He has to hold her hips down onto the bed, using his full weight. She must think him a rake, he muses, as his tongue flicks against her hot, slick flesh. He isn’t, though. Sometimes your extensive knowledge of theory can win the day.

* 

After her release, he asks her to - for lack of a better term - ride him. From his observations he’d gleaned that women got the most pleasure from this position and it was all the better to watch her face. Besides, he didn’t want to do anything that reminded her of Albrecht. 

That first moment of being inside her takes his breath away. She is so tight and wet and that flush dreeps across her body. Then she begins to move. It was almost enough to stop him observing; to be in this moment sans thought . But, of course, not enough.

*

The moment of climax makes his vision blur for a moment. Clara, having reached her second peak of the night, aided by his thumb on her clitoris, slumps down beside him and muffles her giggles into his neck. In his watching he’d noticed that women often laughed after a strong release. He rolls onto his side and goes to kiss her forehead; instead she catches his mouth.

They kiss, passion growing again. The fabled second wind. His cock hardens; he felt some embarrassment as it awkwardly pokes her thigh. She laughs, moves closer and hooks a leg over his hip. 

* 

More intense negotiation follows. Finally Clara braces her hands on the headboard and lets him penetrate her from behind. Like a dog, she says. No, he wants to reply, like Lady Malborough prefers it when it is her second footman attends to her needs. 

She fails to understand and he cannot explain that it is not unusual to want it differently; harder or faster or sweeter. Or with people watching, his traitorous brain supplies. Sometimes watching is better than the doing. Although not this time. There is nothing better than this. She is biting her lip to keep from screaming. 

*

 

Jonah doesn’t know when he falls asleep but Clara is gone when he wakes up. He meets Albrecht at breakfast; blames a hangover for his silence. Albrecht is full of fellow feeling, and they part without so much as a word about German reunification. 

He doesn’t see Clara or Albrecht in person again; they leave for the Continent, suddenly. There is no hint that Albrecht knows what transpired between Jonah and his wife. Albrecht keeps writing to him. The last time he watches Clara is a mere moment; her throwing a bloody cloth into the fire. So much for lust.

*

He keeps her chemise. He isn’t pining for her; more for a moment in his life when he did a normal, human thing. That it was bedding his friend’s wife doesn’t give him any guilt. He was young and she was beautiful. Such things happen everywhere.

Albrecht writes to tell him Clara has died of consumption, shortly after their trip to the Schwartzwald. Albrecht’s own, more interesting, death follows. He gets word of this from Albrecht’s nephew . Another lively correspondence ensues although this one of a very different bent. 

 

When Jonah dies, the chemise is discovered and quickly thrown away.


End file.
